It’s all go for Milano Film Festival, chaired by the new director Gabriele Salvatores

by Camillo De Marco

27/09/2018 - The 23rd edition kicks off tomorrow on Friday, 28 October with The World is Yours and Denmark. There will also be a tribute to Matteo Garrone and the Belgian animators Swaef and Roels

The World Is Yours by Romain Gavras

The 23rd edition of Milano Film Festival is due to kick off on Friday, 28 September, chaired by the new artistic director Gabriele Salvatores in co-direction with Alessandro Beretta. The event’s first programmed evening at the Anteo Palazzo del Cinema will be hosting one of the most anticipated premieres in The Outsiders - Out of Competition section: The World is Yours[+see also: film reviewtrailerinterview: Romain Gavrasfilm profile], a brilliant French gangster film directed by Romain Gavras, starring Vincent Cassel and Isabelle Adjani, presented at Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2018. Denmark[+see also: film reviewtrailerfilm profile] by KasperRune Larsen will also be screened on the same evening as part of the International Feature Films Competition – the competitive MFF section open to first and second films. The director of this debut will also be in attendance at the screening, following the film's international premiere in the Generation 14plus section at the Berlinale.

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The 23rd edition's programme – composed of two international competitions (eight feature films and 38 short films), three new sections (Ultra Reality, My Screen, Art Cinema), and various exhibitions (The Outsiders, Animation Focus, VideoEspanso, milano film festivalino) – flits from emerging directors to great directors, with a tribute to Matteo Garrone due to take place on Monday, 1 October at the Cineteca Spazio Oberdan.

Family seems to play an important role in all eight films in competition, from the extended family and community dimension of a kibbutz in The Dive[+see also: trailerfilm profile] by Israeli director Yona Rozenkier, to an incredibly dysfunctional family in Thunder Road by American director Jim Cummings and the crisis of the family institution in Tropical Virus by Santiago Caicedo, based on the graphic novel by Paola Power. Reflections on identity also seem to stand out, both in terms of the individual (in the Danish film Denmark and Crystal Swan[+see also: film reviewtrailerinterview: Darya Zhukfilm profile] by the director Darya Zhuk, the first Belarusian film in the running for an Oscar) and in terms of the entire nation (The Mercy of the Jungle[+see also: film reviewtrailerinterview: Joël Karekezifilm profile] by the Ugandan director Joël Karekezi and The Third Wife by the Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair, winner of the NETPAC Prize for Best Asian film at Toronto Film Festival 2018), including in a film as different as Luz[+see also: trailerfilm profile]by the German director Tilman Singer, an enigmatic demon-possessed horror film.

Fresh off the plane from Venice 75, in collaboration with BookCity Milano, is Non-Fiction[+see also: film reviewtrailerinterview: Olivier Assayasfilm profile] by OlivierAssayas, a brilliant comedy starring GuillaumeCanet and Juliette Binoche. The section will also be hosting the last-minute addition of Museo, the Mexican heist film that won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the last Berlinale, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios and starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

Animation has once again confirmed its important role at the festival, with the first Animation Focus event due to take place on Monday, 1 October with the historic Animation Marathon, a night that offers an overview of animated short films alternating between stop-motion, drawn animation, puppetry and digital rendering, and between different genres, schools and styles over the course of three hours. Saturday, 6 October will see the festival celebrating the very original journey of two Belgian animators Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, with the screening of the medium-length film The Magnificent Cake! (screened in competition at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes), to be preceded by Oh Willy..., a short film made by the couple back in 2012. An unmissable opportunity for those wanting to find out more about two of the most original players on the European animation scene.

(Translated from Italian)

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